Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Journalist Lost

The tragic end to reporter Michael Hastings has been a story today. Most are linking him to a book he wrote about his fiance being killed in Iraq or more notably, the Rolling Stone piece he did that resulted in the canning of General McChrystal. He made a lot of enemies.

But one email exchange he had with a State Department employee stands out to me:

Thanks for getting back to me.

No, you read my email correctly—I found your statement to CNN offensive.
From my perspective, the scandal here is that the State Department had such inadequate security procedures in place that four Americans were killed. And then the Ambassador’s diary—and who knows what else—was left behind for anyone to pick up. Thankfully, it was CNN—and not Al Qaeda or some other militia—that found it and was able to return it to the family. That CNN used portions of the material in the diary they found at the scene—material that appears to contradict the official version of events that State/WH has been putting out—is completely in line with practices of good journalism.

As they say, read the whole thing because it's important for context. You might also want to review the issue they were discussing--Ambassador Stevens' diary, found by CNN in the Benghazi rubble days after the incident. State was mad because they reported on some of the contents after agreeing not to, but only after the Rice Sunday shows blamed the video/mob and Hillary lied about not knowing about the diary contents. Hastings certainly had them pegged back then.